Father Baldock hurried over. Told me to stop cleaning the chicken coop and go immediately to the Rose and Crown in Stony Stratford where I was needed.

The plague had taken both my parents, sparing me except for horrible buboe scars on my face and neck. Bradwell Abbey gave me alms in return for working in the gardens and kitchen. God and work were all I knew. Nothing changed except the seasons and fresh graves in the graveyard.

The street outside the Rose and Crown was choked with horses, their riders revealing belted swords and rondel daggers under their cloaks. One man stood out. He wore a black fur-fringed velvet cloak and a plumed chaperon head-dress. A sharp, narrow face. Alert blue eyes. Authority sat easy on him, despite his rather lopsided shoulders.

The landlord told me that some important travellers had arrived to stay the night and I was to help with their food.

That evening, I helped prepare wooden trenchers of venison, pheasant, chicken and bread for our travellers. We had no silver-gilt. I took the food to a room where there were 6 or 7 people. One a boy aged about 11, the rest adults: all dressed as if from another world.

One of the older men was called Rivers. He kept calling the boy ‘My liege’. The monks never called each other that. When the boy saw me, a loud gasp escaped his open mouth and disgust flooded his eyes. Had he never seen a plague survivor before?

The man with the lopsided back was also there. The boy addressed him as ‘My lord Gloucester’, his voice like the Abbot giving a sermon. A man called Grey looked jumpy. His nervous eyes kept darting from the boy, to the window, and finally to the door. His white-knuckled hand lay close to his knife-belt.

I walked in and out with the food. Grey suddenly cursed me with a viper’s tongue:

‘Be quick, you hideous wretch.’ he snapped with a scowl. ‘The King is hungry. We have waited too long.’

To my surprise, the man Gloucester glowered at him and said with icy calm:

‘Hold your tongue Grey. She serves the King well. The poor soul does not merit such harsh words.’

‘Yes, I pray be kind,’ echoed Rivers.

I could feel tension thickening in that shadowy room littered with chicken bones and the heavy pall of tallow candles. The boy looked mildly amused, Grey’s face deathly pale: jaw clenched tight, eyes glued to the floor. Gloucester watched him and Rivers like a patient hawk hovering over field mice ,thin lips quickly killing a smile.

An uneasy sleep shattered next morning by raucous shouts in the street, the clash of swords and clattering horses hooves. Rivers and Grey’s people taken north under armed guard. Gloucester rode off with the boy king and his party. When he rode past me, Gloucester briefly touched his Chaperon hood with his gloved finger not seeing my scars.